Burns and Medical Injuries

Sustaining a burn injury or undergoing a major traumatic accident are very stressful experiences; the recovery is often a lengthy and arduous process. While most people show a good capacity to adjust to burns and traumatic injuries, strong emotional responses can emerge upon discharge from hospital impacting on every-day activities, relationships, and ability to return to work and reintegrate into society.

Common psychological reactions after injury include anxiety about the future, concerns about scarring or changed appearance, feeling troubled by discomfort, pain and itching symptoms, low mood and lack of motivation, feeling upset about being dependent on others, feeling distant towards others, having difficulty with closeness and intimacy, wanting to avoid activities that remind them of the injury, having difficulty with return to work, reliving the burns or hospital experiences, nightmares, being hypervigilant, avoiding social and vocational activities and insomnia.

Our team have worked extensively with Burns Survivors in the WA State Adult Burns Unit, and the WA State Trauma Rehabilitation units and have specialised knowledge of helping people and their families cope with the psychological consequences of sustaining a burn injury or multi trauma injuries.

Depending on an individual’s unique response to their injury, we work to identify their individual challenges and match these too well researched therapeutic approaches to improve coping and regain their independence of hope for the future. These approaches may include Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness, Humanistic Existential Psychotherapy, and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR).